Chapter 16

Tuesday was a long day. Patty had kept the girls home from school and I was alone all day except for a few moments with Tricia at the start of the day. I sat at lunch with my laptop out and watched lectures until it was time to go back to class. I met Tricia for a quick kiss before having to run to race the bell. She was at least getting the point across. She told someone that morning that her boyfriend put four guys in the hospital over the weekend for hitting on her. That was cutting down on the requests for dates or invitations to parties.

We met Emma and Zoe out front of the school and I got very passionate kisses from all three girls, which was noticed by a lot of the class as they were filing out to catch buses or drives or to walk home. “How’d the rest of last night go?” Emma asked, wondering how my talk with Patty went.

“I told Patty that the girls were dead to me and that I wasn’t going to risk what I had with you for the sake of doing the job of the counselor that should have been hired in the first place. I told her that you three deserve better than to have Lana and Beck putting themselves in the middle of us and driving us apart.”

“I never said anything like that!” Emma protested, turning to look at me before starting the car, alarmed.

“I know you didn’t,” I said calmly. “But it’s a real concern. I’ve known those girls since I was five. If I didn’t close that door and hard, you’d always worry that they could summon me back with any minor breakdown. You all deserve better than that from me, so I’m making sure you GET better than that from me. It was your suggestion, but like I told my sister, it was my choice and I choose you.”

“You DID tell me he was perfect,” Zoe reminded her with a giggle.

Emma looked stunned. I’d seen to the heart of the issue and defused it before she’d even realized it could be a problem. “Are you okay?” she asked. “That was the love of your life and your best friend.”

“I was angry when Lilly came into my room to lecture me about it, but I’m feeling good about the decision. I love you three. I can make new friends, but even if I don’t make new ones soon, the three of you will sustain me just fine. I don’t think I’ll make a lot of friends at the high school at this point. Too much has happened. Most people are scared of me for one reason or another.”

“Maybe,” Tricia said and shrugged. “The girls are starting to talk about you in the washrooms since Saturday. You might find yourself getting more attention from them.”

“Oh?” Zoe asked. “What are they saying?” she asked, getting very interested in this news.

“Just wondering what he’s like and wondering whether he’s back with the Powers sisters mostly,” she said. “There’s a lot of speculation about what’s under the costume you were wearing on Saturday. I heard at least one girl talk about asking you to the Sadie Hawkins dance on the 21st.”

“Was that one girl you?” I asked with a slight smile.

“No, it was Gloria Stevens,” she said, not catching my meaning.

“Oh, that’s a shame,” I said, looking comically glum.

“Why? Gloria’s probably the prettiest girl in the Freshman class.”

“He was hinting that YOU should ask him,” Emma clued her in.

“Really?” she said, surprised. “Why? Gloria’s way prettier than me.”

I took her face in my hands and turned her to face me. “You have one thing Gloria doesn’t,” I told her simply.

“What?” she asked, her nose crinkling in that way that made her look even cuter.

“Me,” I told her.

She beamed and kissed me deeply again. “Will you go with me?” she asked bright-eyed.

I smiled and nodded. “I would be thrilled to go to the Sadie Hawkins dance with you,” I told her.

She was giddy with excitement the rest of the way to the gym, making Emma and Zoe giddy for her.

When we got to the gym, I signed in and paid for a day pass for Tricia. Inside, we split up to get changed and I was back first. I started to stretch out, following the routine that the trainers had laid out for me during the summer.

“You’re doing it wrong!” someone snapped from behind me as I was stretching out my legs.

I looked up and there was a fanatically fit looking woman watching me stretch. She had close-cropped blonde hair and brown eyes that might have been pretty if not for the critical look on her face. “I’m sorry, what am I doing wrong?” I asked politely. She HAD to be the trainer and I’d promised to play nice.

“Your stretching,” she said as if I was simple. “You’re not doing it right. What idiot taught you that?”

“Don DelNegro is his name,” I said, a little irritable. I was fine with her being abusive to me, but Don had helped me a lot.

“Let me guess,” she said. “He doesn’t have a degree, but he’s been training all his life and just KNOWS how to do it right.” She rolled her eyes in disgust.

“Actually he has several degrees and he’s the head trainer for the Boston Bruins,” I supplied helpfully. “He taught me to stretch like this when he was helping me rehab a sprained ankle over the summer, so it might not be an appropriate method now that I’m healed, but he never told me that it was wrong to continue doing it like this. Is there a better way to do it depending on my workout goals?” I asked, testing whether she was going to be more concerned with answering my question or saving face after being so blatantly wrong.

“Well what are you training for?” she asked me, a little more civil.

“I take Kung Fu and dance, so I need some strength and a lot of flexibility. I’d thought about taking some gymnastics for the tumbling and stretching. I felt like it would help with both the dance class and Kung Fu.”

She listened and shrugged. “Well your stretching isn’t going to help much with flexibility. I can show you some better ways to do it, but you’ll hate me for it.”

“Doubtful,” I laughed. “I might wish I was dead at the end of it, but I’d genuinely appreciate the help. I wouldn’t hate you for getting me through it.”

She got a gleam in her eye when I said that and I knew that she was going to push me harder than she should just to punish me for shooting her down over how I’d been taught to stretch.

She started and if I hadn’t had a lot of flexibility from martial arts and dance, I would have been crying by the end of it. I remembered everything she taught me though. I planned to look up every stretch she’d put me through when I went home to see what the consensus was in the sports medicine community on when and how to use it. By the time I was done, the girls were already working out and Emma was looking at me worriedly.

I thanked the trainer and introduced myself. “Hanna Smith,” she said, trying to crush my hand when I offered it to her to shake. I disliked her, not because of the stretching, but because she felt like I deserved shabby treatment from her because of being born male.

“Thanks again, Hanna,” I said pleasantly. “I learned a lot today. Are you full time on staff or are you a student?”

“Why do you want to know?” she asked suspiciously.

“I’m planning on trying to come in on Saturdays. I figured it was more likely that I’d see you on weekends if you were working around a class schedule,” I told her. I couldn’t really judge her age because she was so deeply fit. She could be 18 or 40 and I’d never know which from her face or body.

“I work out on Saturday, but I work Monday to Friday,” she said finally. “If you can actually walk by Saturday, then I’ll be glad to punish you some more.”

I rolled my eyes and scoffed. “Whatever helps you sleep at night,” I said dryly. “If you think this is punishment, maybe you need to step into my house.”

“You think you can teach me about pain?” she laughed, rising to the challenge. “Wadda ya got kid? You hit the P90X and think you’re extreme?”

I shrugged. “Nothing so mundane,” I said. “You wouldn’t like the kinds of pain I deal in. Let’s just leave it in the gym. Your gentle treatment isn’t really bad enough to earn a trip to the house of pain.”

Emma had been hovering close and was looking at me like I was playing with fire.

“Big talk from a little boy,” she challenged me. “Not surprising that you can’t back it up.”

“Oh, I can back it up, but I doubt you could handle it. I’m just taking it off the table so no one has to look bad.”

The great thing about people who wallow in pride, they’re slaves to it. Now that I’d thrown down the gauntlet, she almost had to pick it up.

She didn’t disappoint. “Name the time and the place,” she said, a gleam in her eye that said she wasn’t going to back down.

I gave her my address and told her 7PM Thursday. “Have your safeword ready and wear something you don’t care if you still own at the end of the night. A change of clothes might make the drive home less embarrassing too.”

We’d gathered some attention and she wanted one last jab. “My safeword is ‘Sissyboy’,” she said to me with a smirk.

“Just remember,” I told her. “When you use that safeword, you’re telling me that’s what you are to me, what you’ll always be.”

Her eyes widened and I thought for a moment, she might actually hit me. Then she shook her head and walked away.

Emma, Zoe and Tricia came up to me, wide-eyed. “Did you just...” Emma started.

“Yup.”

“With Hanna? The man-hating trainer?” Zoe whispered.

“I sure did.”

“What are you gonna do to her?” Tricia wanted to know.

“Make her say that safeword,” I said confidently.

“You think you can?” Zoe said skeptically.

I smiled and thought about what I had at my disposal. “I can make a dog sing like a canary with enough time to figure out what pressures irritate them.”

“You think you have enough time to figure it out?” Emma asked.

“People are like books. I seem to be able to read them well enough when I’m trying to pull out the details,” I pointed out. “Besides, I have everything I need to turn her inside out. Come inside when you drop me off and I’ll show you some of the collection.”

“The collection?” Zoe asked, intimidated.

“Like every hobby, there’s a set of tools specific to it.”

I left them with that thought and we all went to work out. I saw Hanna several times and she always had a challenging smile on her face. When we were done, I took the girls and went to find her. I asked her for a tape measure and she dug a cloth tape out of her pocket. I measured her neck and both wrists, crouching to measure her ankles while I asked if she had any particular allergies or medical conditions that might require my defibrillator, medication or medical attention.

“Cocky little prick, aren’t you?” she commented.

“It’s not so little,” I said, measuring her waist. “But it IS certainly cocky. Can you touch your elbows behind your back?” I asked, hopefully. “Never mind. I’ll assume yes for now.” I went to the desk for a piece of paper and wrote the address, date and time down and gave it to her.

She held her tongue until I turned to leave. “I doubt you’ll even be able to get up to answer the door by Thursday night,” she commented with a laugh.

I smiled at her. “I promise, if I don’t have it in me to do the work myself, I’ll have you attended to in a manner I approve of. I doubt I’ll have a problem though. I’ll be as spry tomorrow as you will be on Friday. I guarantee it.” I left a slight edge in my voice for the last statement. Her smile didn’t falter, but I could see that she’d taken the challenge in my words to heart.